


Train

by storm_of_sharp_things



Category: Original Work
Genre: Surreal, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 21:52:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18269984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storm_of_sharp_things/pseuds/storm_of_sharp_things
Summary: Sometimes the wrong train lets you off somewhere unexpected...Original short fiction





	Train

She stood on the high platform, chill breeze slipping past her wrists in the light coat, tickling stray wisps of hair across her bare neck, and ruffling her trouser legs to nip at her ankles.  Just past sunset and three trains had already slid up to her, gaping their doors invitingly to expose their clean fluorescent and plastic hollows, then shrugged at her indifference and slid away again.  An express had rushed past with a sneering whistle at the mere idea of stopping at such an unimportant station on the outskirts of the great city.  Last stop before the tangle of aging industry ran roughshod over the aging slums.  Last stop before the bright city lights and overpriced glass condo towers overpowered the warehouses with broken glass like snarling teeth which encroached on the empty, sagging houses with faded graffiti and tiny yards of dusty dirt and dying weeds.  Last stop in the other direction before the commuter stretch to the sleepy suburbs full of bright plastic toys, bright green grass, dishwashers, and fully finished basements with wall-mounted televisions.  Only stop for the slender tongue of trees and river that tentatively touched this barest edge of the city before fleeing back to what little remained of the struggling wilderness.

Months ago, she’d gotten on the wrong train, distracted by a good book.  Counting stops by habit, she’d gotten off on this little platform, high above the silent river, the oddly quiet trees peering over the edge of the platform.  She’d worked late and the sun had already set, autumn just beginning to press summer aside, which, like any set of siblings, only resulted in summer squatting harder on the city in a possessive tantrum.  The heat had gnawed at her on the exposed platform, even under a darkening purple sky, while she waiting for a train back through the city.  No stars, of course.  The plague of city lights muted everything but the moon into a flat wash of matte sky.

There had been a train that glided to a halt at the station; a dark car directly in front of her, lighted cars before and after it.  When the door slipped open, she couldn’t see anything inside – no lights, no seats, no bars along the ceiling and walls to hold, no windows on the far side.  The door emptied into a grey, lightless void that took a slow indrawn breath, her hair brushing along her cheeks in the gentle suck of air.  She’d taken a half-step towards the waiting, dim nothingness before she realized it; skittering backwards like a startled sandpiper, the air brushed against her like unseen impatient passengers that parted reluctantly around her on their way to board.  Then the door had sighed shut, the slight pull feathering away, and the train had surged off, the rest of the cars lit and normal, a few tired people swaying on the seats.

She’d pressed back against the platform wall, mutely watching several more trains go by, all entirely ordinary, before she’d dared to board one.

It was a week before she returned to the station.  She’d worked out which train she’d mistakenly gotten on (the one five minutes after her usual) and avoided it vigilantly.  But after a delay at work left her watching her usual disappearing into the distance, and facing an evening of a lonely apartment, reruns, and leftovers, she rather surprised herself by shuffling onto the wrong train when it arrived at the platform.

It was only curiosity, she thought to herself as she disembarked at the strange little platform above the quiet river, with the trees shifting silently against the darkening sky.  I was tired that night.  I didn’t really see what I thought I saw, she told herself as she set her back to the platform wall.  She watched several ordinary trains pass, pausing to offer themselves to her or sweeping by in brisk express contempt.

She’d almost given up and was considering boarding the next train to go home when it sighed up and settled, the car facing her full of dawn light and drifting clouds of feathers.

Uncountable numbers of every color and size, from flurries of tiny pastel and white snowflake down to one long brilliant red and black feather than fell slowly past the door, longer than the train car was, wider than she was tall.  She could see every barb branching off the central shaft, glistening in the slow bloom of dawn.  Vivid feathers that would have shamed peacocks winked their eyes at her, wafting closer when she stared, turning sharp bone-colored quills toward her.  She averted her gaze, alarmed, and the door slid shut on the slow vibrant swirl.  The train glided off, the last car holding only a weary mother with two young children, mouths stretched in unheard howls.

She took the next ordinary train home.

Every few days, she would take the wrong train to the small station and wait for the odd cars.  It became a need, a compulsion that would see her through long days at a numbing job, long nights in an empty apartment. 

Train cars full of evening forests in the snow, gnarled branches bare, delicate glowing lanterns like huge filigree leaves hanging from the lower limbs. Transparent shadowy figures swayed gently between the tree trunks as if hanging from invisible nooses.  Occasional inhuman footprints might dot the snow near the open door and begin to fill in again with the light flakes from the unseen sky.  If one of the crook-necked hanging shadows began to slowly open its eyes, a muted yellow glow behind the rising lids, she learned to immediately drop her gaze.

Train cars of abyssal ocean, hints of murky green light barely visible inside past the top of the car through the windows.  In the benthic unknowable depths, distant sparkles she presumed were bioluminescent fish or jellies twinkled in a slow dance, occasionally occluded by huge shadow shapes that drifted ominously closer if she stared.  Once, she saw a bright knot of colorful lights in the extreme distance that slowly blossomed in a spiral then exploded suddenly away in all directions.

More cars of feathers, displayed in varying light from indulgent dawn to lazy sunset.  Once, a car of flowers, a wild jungle of slowly writhing blooms in every shade of blue, twining around each other in a riot of incestuous tints, from palest powder blue through cornflower, royal to sapphire, to a phthalo blue so intense it overlay her vision for several minutes after the car had left.  Only in remembering afterwards did she recall the yellow stamens that lapped at each other like sly tongues.

There was a car of painfully bright burning noon over a hissing orange desert aflame, the blown sands billowing from the tops of the dunes in angry plumes of ash against a harsh blue sky.  Several cars of storms, from a drenching tropical downpour to a rage of hail the size of her head, gales howling, and lightning flaring closer and closer as she watched. A car of gravestones, slowly shifting in wet soil as if they were the backs of subterranean snails.  The blurred names on the stones began to become clear as she watched, so she hurriedly looked away.

And once, she found herself on the platform with an exhausted businessman in a shabby suit.  She eyed him as he swayed slightly in the brisk autumn breeze, unkempt hair ruffling, but though he glanced at her once, he never spoke.  When the strange car halted in front of them, the door opened on the grey void.  He exhaled a deep sigh at the same time as the car inhaled slowly, his breath misting into the mild draw of air.  He took off his frayed jacket and folded it over his arm, and stepped into the car with the relief of a man arriving home after war.  His form wavered and dissolved into the ashen emptiness.  The door closed as the last wisps were unraveling into nothing.

Riding an ordinary train after the confronting the strangeness made the prosaic seem precious, as if she needed to observe everything with gentleness lest it split open and spill the inexplicable at her.


End file.
